The American Girl by Rachael English EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Rachael English
- Language: English
- Genre: Adoption
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Boston, 1968
Rose Moroney twirled around the bedroom. Arms outstretched, long brown
hair swishing, she felt impossibly light, like a dancer en pointe or a gymnast
on a sprung floor.
‘You’re still seeing him, aren’t you?’ said Nancy.
‘You know, Nance, what I do is none of your business. I’m seventeen, I
don’t need a chaperone.’
‘Yeah, well, Mom and Dad don’t agree. Before they left, they warned
me. “Keep an eye on her,” they said. “Heaven only knows what she’s up
to.”’
Rose raised a shoulder, smiled, but said nothing.
How she hated sharing a room with her elder sister. Her prissy, prying
elder sister. They’d moved all the way out here to Milton, to this huge
house, and still she didn’t have a room of her own. Being the youngest of
six was a drag. Oh, other folks had this crazy idea about her having lots of
freedom. ‘Lucky you,’ they’d say. ‘The youngest is always spoilt.’ That
wasn’t how Rose saw it. Not only did her parents insist on watching her
every move, she had to put up with her sister and four brothers meddling in
her life. You’d swear they had no lives of their own. Actually, in Nancy’s
case this was true. At nineteen, she was already a frump, and her boyfriend,
Theo, was the most boring guy in Boston.
A quick stop in front of the mirror, and Rose smoothed the front of her
new dress. If she said so herself, she looked good. The sky-blue cotton
brought out the blue of her eyes, and the short skirt emphasised her legs.
She decided to back-comb her roots just a teensy bit more. She’d seen a
picture of the English model Jean Shrimpton in a magazine and that was the
look she was aiming for: wide-eyed, willowy, sophisticated. Not that it was
easy to achieve. Just applying her mascara – scraping the brush across the
black block before coating each lash – took the best part of ten minutes.
When she’d finished her hair and make-up, she turned to Nancy, who
remained spreadeagled across her own bed. ‘How do I look?’
‘Available.’
‘That’s the general idea.’ Of course, Rose wasn’t available – she was
Joe’s girl – but she liked to keep her sister guessing.
Nancy made a snorting sound and returned to her book. Although Rose
was also a reader, Nancy was determined to be the high-minded sister. She
was endlessly competitive, anxious to prove to their parents, Ed and Grace,
that she was the brighter, more industrious daughter. Rose enjoyed playing
up her ditsy side. At school, she’d act dim then confound everybody by
scoring straight As. ‘That’s my Rosie,’ her dad would say. ‘She keeps those
teachers on their toes.’ Her mom would get all crabby and tell her she was
too old for such silliness.
Rose reached into the back of the closet and plucked out her black spike
heels. When her parents were around, her favourite shoes had to remain
hidden. ‘Inappropriate,’ her mother called them. ‘Inappropriate’ was one of
her catchwords, along with ‘trashy’
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